


Memoirs of a Monster

by Recipe



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 07:10:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21267095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recipe/pseuds/Recipe
Summary: There is a blade in his shoulder.How… unladylike of her, to return a gift like this. But Dimitri supposes, it wasn't very gentlemanly of him to have gifted her a dagger in the first place.(In which Dimitri is plagued by the past even as he moves forward.)





	Memoirs of a Monster

**Author's Note:**

> Angst ahead. _Tea is for Teacher_ was beginning to get more angsty than I wanted its tone to be so I am spending it on this idea that I've had the past few months, so here's a little something before I go back to my regularly scheduled programming. Hope you enjoy!__

There is a blade in his shoulder.

How… unladylike of her, to return a gift like this. But Dimitri supposes, it wasn't very gentlemanly of him to have gifted her a dagger in the first place.

He isn’t sure what hurts more - his shoulder, or his heart.

* * *

He remembers a boy with vivid red hair that wouldn't lie flat and a shorter boy with black hair that always fell in his eyes.

"Dimitri," he remembers the older one whining. "Come on. Just one game? You haven't played Knights of Seiros with us all summer!"

He remembers dark eyes watching him hopefully and resolutely from behind the redhead, and he remembers them glaring and a man's voice that comes from the child's mouth. A sneer: "Boar prince," it taunts.

He remembers blond locks and a shake of the head. He remembers a feeling of desperation and urgency and confusion and loss. Someone has died.

No, someone was leaving. Soon.

He remembers a sheathed dagger in his right hand.

He remembers a man's voice in his ear. It sounds familiar. He thinks it’s the same voice that used to read him stories of goddesses and wyverns. "Use it," it hisses. "Cut off her head. Make it a good-bye forever."

* * *

Nothing about Edelgard was simple. He should've known that it would extend to her death.

The moment the light slips from her eyes, she rises again and steps in line behind Rodrigue.

She laughs at him with a chilling joy. "If you wanted me to be with you always," she says, "why didn't you just ask?"

* * *

"I've always called you the boar prince," Felix says. "But the monster Edelgard became…" He trails off. Felix has never been much for words, and they elude him yet again.

“Say it,” Edelgard hisses from beside Felix. “_ Say _ it.”

"The eldritch emperor?" Sylvain suggests lightly, sliding into the seat beside Felix and Edelgard disappears momentarily. Sylvain has always had the words that Felix did not. Perhaps that is why they have grown so close together during the war, from childhood friends to lifelong companions whereas Dimitri...

She’s behind Sylvain, now. "Eldritch emperor?" Edelgard sniffs. "You will not _ stand _ to allow my name be tarnished as such. Give me his _ head _."

She looks as royal as ever, her silver hair perfectly pinned, a direct contrast to his own shaggy yellow locks. Sometimes he sweeps it back from his face. Dimitri knows it does little to help his haggard appearance, but he still can’t look into the mirror without seeing the faces of those he killed queued behind him, watching him, _ waiting _ for his turn to step into the line of the dead.

He can see them out of the corner of his eyes now. Rodrigue steps forward, but Dimitri ignores him and focuses on Sylvain instead.

"And how are you doing?" he inquires. "Seeing Edelgard's transformation - "

Sylvain's facade breaks around the edges. "If you're talking about Miklan," he says shortly, "it's fine."

("What's that, Sylvain?" He remembers a boy's voice, innocent and inquisitive. Had it been his? "Did you get hurt in training?"

He remembers another boy with bright red hair and dark blue bruises the shape of fingerprints against pale skin as he pulled the cuffs of his shirt down.

He remembers someone older with similar hair and a square jaw leering over him, growling, "I'll have your neck, next.")

Though he doesn’t know this battle-wearied version of Sylvain as well as Felix, Dimitri knows enough to say that he’s lying; and Sylvain knows Dimitri probably better than Dimitri knows himself and refuses to let him dwell on the subject as Dimitri was inclined to do. “Didn't you have a catchy name for him, too?" Sylvain says quickly, turning to Felix. “What was it?”

A quick glance is all Felix needs to offer Sylvain his escape. "Ah yes," Felix obliges. "The dragon bastard."

"His head too," Edelgard demands, leaning down to hover a hair away from Felix's jawline, though Felix doesn’t notice. Her lips pull into an ugly sneer. "He must pay for his disrespect."

His mother - _ step-mother _ \- steps in behind Edelgard and lays a hand on the deceased empress’s shoulder: a gentle, physical love that Dimitri never experienced. The wound in his shoulder sears. “Do as she says.”

Sylvain chuckles humorlessly, but not at anything in particular. “The dragon bastard,” he repeats slowly, tasting the syllables. “It sounds so regal for what he really was.”

“What was he?” Dimitri asks.

“Just a bastard,” Sylvain says. His jaw is tight. “Nothing more.”

* * *

He remembers a closed door, but the picture is blurry. He remembers feeling like something hot and wet was running down his face and a pain in his throat as if it had screamed itself raw.

"Ingrid, come _ out _!" He remembers the words but he doesn’t remember who says them.

He does, however, remember a muffled response through the door: “Not until you kill every last one of them.”

Of course, it’s been a long time since Dimitri truly trusted his memory.

After all, his memory tells him that he once loved Edelgard.

* * *

At night, it’s worse.

At night, the darkness crowds, and the light of a lantern casts long shadows on the ground.

At night, their voices are louder, and there is no one else around to drown them out.

At night, he stands out on the balcony and thinks, what if - 

“Dimitri?”

He turns around and catches sight of sea green hair that catches the moonlight with a brightness that leaves no silhouette. It’s relief, he thinks, that he feels when he sees it’s not silver. “Archbishop,” he acknowledges.

“_ Byleth _,” she insists.

He remembers a time when he insisted on eschewing formalities. “Byleth,” he concedes.

She peers up at the sky. “It’s early.”

“It’s late,” he corrects. It’s the dead of night and he hasn’t slept.

She turns her gaze and her green eyes arrest him momentarily. “It’s early,” she repeats, and she settles in to a chair and draws her cloak tighter around her, waiting for the sunrise still hours away.

She doesn’t leave, and the ghosts don’t come.

* * *

But only for one night.

“Your Majesty,” Dedue says. “You have not slept.”

“There will be no sleep for you until the rest are dead,” Edelgard says idly, stalking a circle around his retainer. Her heels make no noise against the stone floor.

They’re louder when he’s tired. “The kingdom is in ruin,” he says. _ And their king is ruined _, he thinks, but he swallows those words because those are not the words that Dedue wants to hear. They’re the words that please Edelgard, and he will not give her the satisfaction. They taste like ash on the way down. “There is much to be done.”

“Beginning with _ rest _,” Dedue says, pushing a cup of tea towards him.

Its smell is unfamiliar. “Poison,” his father says before casting a meaningful look at Edelgard. “Feed it to _ her _.”

“It’s a blend from an herb that I have been cultivating in the greenhouse. It only just blossomed. In Duscur, we drink this tea to relax the mind.” There’s a note of pleasure in Dedue’s voice, a hint of pride from having resurrected something dead in the form of a flower.

(“What’s this?” He remembers a girl with light brown hair tied neatly half-up, squatting in the grasses.

He remembers that boy’s voice, the one in so many of his memories, saying, “A flower.”

He remembers a roll of the eyes that accompanies a “I know _ that, _ stupid.” He remembers a child’s finger gently running along the edges of the frost white petals. “But what kind? I don’t think we have this flower in Adrestia.”

He remembers a silent promise to read every book in the library on flowers until he could answer her question.

He remembers a voice telling her to choke on those petals. It sounds like Glenn.)

“Before it’s cold,” Dedue reminds him.

“Ah, right.” He sips and it’s warm and floral and light, and he searches for the bitterness in its taste. “It’s delicious. Thank you, Dedue.”

It was only some months ago when Dedue was among those of his father and his mother - _ step-mother _ \- and his friends: a hateful version of the man before him, one with a few less scars and a few more curses. A version of the man who didn’t appreciate flowers and prepare teas. Sometimes, he looks at Dedue and recalls just how much he defiled the man’s image in his memory when Dimitri took him for dead, and he hates himself for it.

“You can thank me by getting some rest,” he says and clasps Dimitri’s good shoulder. It blocks out the view of Edelgard, and she doesn’t reappear.

The physical touch grounds him. He can feel the weight and warmth of Dedue’s hand through his tunic. 

(He thinks Dedue does this on purpose - that he knows he was among the dead that haunted Dimitri’s footsteps during his time in Duscur, and he knows that ghosts don’t have touch.)

“I have a promise to keep first,” Dimitri insists. The words on the parchment before him swim.

He remembers a book with the words “Fhirdiad Flowers” etched in gold ink on the cover.

“Duscar has waited for peace for many years,” Dedue says. “It can wait a few hours more.”

* * *

He dreams of silver hair and violet eyes and swollen lips that he bites and suck.

It’s hot all around and cold all at the same time, and there’s a fire alight deep in his soul and he can’t _ think _ through the haze that is need and he _ needs _ -

“Don’t tease,” she gasps. “Push it inside me.”

His cock twitches and she’s all he can see and he obliges - 

And he presses his lance into the soft of her naked belly.

* * *

When he awakes, Rodrigue is at the foot of his bed.

“Even now,” Rodrigue sneers in a way that is so unlike him, “you love her more than you do the rest of the dead. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Dimitri refuses to look at them and stares at his hands instead. He isn’t sure if they’re actually red or if that’s just his imagination again.

“I gave you her head,” he says finally.

“Yes,” Rodrigue says, displeased. “And you gave her yours.”

* * *

_ No, _ Dimitri thinks. _ I’ve lost that long before her. _

* * *

“Provisions have been delivered to the Faerghus and Adrestia border,” Ingrid reports.

Ashe is at her side and at attention. “I suppose you’ll need to come up with a new name for it,” he supposes, “since Adrestia is no more.”

Edelgard is on her feet, and she hardly towers over Ashe, but she cuts an imposing figure anyways. “Adrestia is _ forever _ ,” she says. “Adrestia is _ mine _ .” She turns to Dimitri and he notices the hole in her stomach as she smiles pityingly at him. “Her current king listens to _ me _, does he not? And he will give me the heads of those who let her name die.”

He only glances at Edelgard briefly before he says, “Thank you both for overseeing the passage of supplies. I am sorry to put you to such menial work, but the cities affected by war require the most love and since I cannot be there, I hope that the presence of heroes such as yourselves can lift the people’s spirits.”

Edelgard laughs, loud and cavernous. “_ Love _ ?” she repeats. “You think you can give them _ love _ when you do not know what that is? I am the only one you’ve ever loved and look what you’ve done to me. You’ve given me a dagger, Dimitri, and a spear through the gut. What’s next?” Her smile is full of teeth, sharp and bloodied. “The heads of those _ I _ loved?”

Ashe blushes and mumbles something about duty and honor, but Dimitri doesn’t quite hear him as Edelgard steps closer to him.

“What do you want me to say now, Dimitri?” Her voice is softer now, and yet it is more deadly. “That you’ll give me the heads of those I loved… that you’ll give me _ your _ head?”

But Ingrid has always been the most perceptive of the four of them that grew up together and yet live. Even though Dimitri does not look Edelgard’s way again, her brow creases and she lurches forward awkwardly as if meaning to approach him before recalling herself. “How are Felix and Sylvain? Are they keeping you company through your duties?”

“Of course,” he says, though he doesn’t mention how he sometimes feels more alone when he’s with just the two of them.

Edelgard smiles. Ingrid frowns.

“What are you thinking?” he says to Ingrid. He hates it when his friends hide things from him. His mind is creative enough on its own without having to guess the thoughts of the living.

“It’s nothing,” she says, shaking her head and straightening her posture. “Forgive me, Your Majesty."

(He remembers his father holding both of Rodrigue's shoulders as the dark haired man bowed his head. "Forgive me, Your Majesty. I arrived as fast as I could, but the blight has - "

He remembers his father letting out a weary sigh, the kind he only released in private. He remembers realizing how much Rodrigue meant to his father when his father sighed in his company.

"I understand, my good friend," his father says. "But let us not speak of these matters here."

He remembers them withdrawing. He remembers his father casting a glance behind him to look at Dimitri and then saying, "You can join us once you've avenged our deaths.")

“Tell me,” he implores.

She hesitates, studying him for a little while, the barest of a frown returning to the corners of her lips. “I was just thinking that men can be absolutely inept creatures when left on their own,” she admits.

Ashe laughs openly. Dimitri wonders vaguely if the young knight can teach him how to laugh like that again. “You’re not wrong,” he agrees amiably before his eyes brighten. “Dimitri - I mean, Your Majesty - you should join us when we head to Garreg Mach. Annette and Mercie are there tending to the sick and wounded, perhaps they can look - “

“And the Archbishop is there too,” Ingrid interrupts smoothly, but a second too late. He knows that they've spoken of him and his health during their travels.

He wishes he didn't give them reason for concern. He hates himself because he gives them too many reasons. He wishes Ingrid didn't feel like she had to hide her concerns. He hates himself because she only hides her thoughts as he so obviously wishes they weren't concerned.

"It would be good to see them all again," Dimitri agrees, "but I have things here that urgently require attention."

Edelgard materializes next to him and breathes into his ear, "Yes. Give Adrestia all of your attention. Give _ me _ all of your attention."

"There will always be things that urgently require attention," Ingrid says. "Still, we cannot force your company, though we would enjoy it."

Ashe looks hopeful.

"I'll consider your proposal," he lies.

He knows he's done a poor job of it when Ashe's face instantly falls.

* * *

He remembers a time of loneliness.

But he wasn't truly alone. The phantoms of his memory kept him company, and they were all he had for a time.

He remembers his father: tall, broad shouldered, once kind features turned stern. "Dimitri, you know what you must do."

He remembers a small boy looking in the mirror, naked and wide-eyed and full of guilt. He remembers that boy striking a servant who tried to force him into something he didn't want to do.

A bath, he remembers. He didn't want to take a bath.

He remembers the words "I'm sorry." He remembers sniffling. He remembers his father looming over him as he touches Dinitri's hair, comforting his son despite his disappointment.

"Bring me her head," his father says. "I shall never know rest until you do."

He remembers a slant look. "Unless… you love her more than you love us."

He remembers a vehement swear. "Never."

He remembers the girl with the long chestnut hair. He remembers her giggles when she taunts him that he can't beat her in a race and then her outright laughter when he gets offended and sets to prove her wrong. He remembers thinking that maybe he'd let her win if it would make her laugh like that, and he remembers changing his mind and winning anyways because he didn't want to _ lose _.

He still won't lose to her. "I'll give you her head if it's the last thing I do," he remembers promising to his own echo.

* * *

He goes to Garreg Mach anyways, because despite himself, he can't stop thinking about the trip. Sylvain pointed out that it would be good for the king to meet with those wounded most by war, and it was the flimsy excuse he needed to saddle his horse and ride south.

Ashe is full of stories the entire ride down, and Ingrid chimes in with well-timed gasps and laughs and one skeptical “Are you _ sure _ that’s what he did?” They’re the perfect travel companions if only Dimitri could stay in the present with them, but his mind keeps wandering to the Duscur negotiations and the tarriffs he’d have to levy to afford the rebuilding efforts and this strange, restless yearning to see the monastery again that he doesn’t understand.

Ashe’s tales don’t succeed in distracting him, but Edelgard is there to help in her own way. “Are you _ happy _ ?” she asks lightly, riding beside him on a mare with hair as silver as her own. “All your loved ones, dead and alive, accompanying you to the center of a unified Fódlan under your rule? Is this all you’ve ever wanted?” She tosses a derisive look at Ashe as he launches into a new tale of grandeur and chivalry and knights and princesses. “Is this your _ happily ever after _?”

Edelgard pulls on her reins suddenly and presses close her mare against his horse. It’s far too close. “For your sake, I hope it is,” she says delicately, “for I will haunt you forever.”

The journey is long. His head aches. His heart spins.

* * *

He remembers crouching in the darkness, matted in grime. No - he remembers being chased by bandits, fear and adrenaline pulsing through his veins.

He remembers a woman with blue hair who cut them down with less expression than a porcelain mask. He remembers spitting at her, “I should have known that one day, you would be haunting me, too.”

No, that doesn’t make sense. That doesn’t make sense at all.

* * *

Mercedes and Annette are delighted when he arrives to the monastery. He knows Mercedes is pleased because Mercedes rambles on of her _ own _ joy, for once, at seeing him again before she pivots and asks what she can do to help him. He knows Annette is pleased because, well, Annette squeals when she sees him and knocks over a crate of bandages as she rushes over to throw her arms around him, and then he catches her singing something that sounds suspiciously like “The prince is king and the king is back, creepity creep and whackity whack” as she cleans up the mess she’s made.

He can’t stay and observe Annette’s lyrics for long as Mercedes draws him away. “Everyone here will be so glad to see you, too!” she says, beaming. “Despite the hardships people here have faced and the injuries they’ve sustained, they all have so much faith in the future and in you. People really are remarkable, aren’t they? Let me introduce you!”

He shakes hands with those who still have hands and bows to those who don’t, and for once the dead are quiet as he speaks with the survivors. Perhaps this is what he’s come here for. To see this place that saw the birth of the war, where he sought sanctuary in those dark years when he was taken for dead, begin to _ heal _.

It makes him think that perhaps he could heal, too.

“You’ll never heal,” Edelgard sneers. “You’re too broken. You’re one of _ us _.”

And it’s like the scar in his shoulder has been torn fresh again and his heart stops and he can’t breathe - 

A new voice cuts in. “Dimitri?”

He turns blindly and he’s hardly sure of where he is - but there’s a shine of something sea green and gentle that gives his eyes something to focus on - 

All he can think of is _ please, please, take me away from here, I can’t - _

Her features are blurry, but her touch is real.

“Will you ride with me?” she asks.

* * *

He remembers waking up.

He remembers Rodrigue and a dying gasp. “Live for what you believe in,” he remembers.

He remembers Rodrigue’s faith in him.

He remembers guilt.

* * *

He has always loved riding. Being astride a horse at full gallop feels like - like _ freedom _, as if he could leave his troubles behind and escape to some place where they would never find him.

He’s a stronger rider than Byleth and tears through the plains outside the city faster than she, and he thinks that perhaps he should slow down to let her catch up -

(He remembers a girl laughing. He remembers reaching a large oak tree and turning around to find her still all the way across the garden, lying down in the grass. “I was only teasing,” he remembers her saying between breaths. “If only you were as good at dancing as you were running.”)

\- but he doesn’t, because if she’s riding hard then so should he, and he _ wants _ to push himself against the wind to the rhythm of the horse’s hoofbeat as fast as he can.

“You should go if it pleases you,” he remembers Dedue saying to him when he discussed leaving Fhirdiad for Garreg Mach. “You spend so much of your energy pleasing others that it would bring me comfort to know that you were to spend a little of it on yourself.”

So he leans further down and he strokes the horse’s neck as he kicks against its belly, and Dimitri wants to _ laugh _ \- openly, loudly, the way that Ashe did so easily the other day. The way Edelgard did when they were younger. The way _ he _ did when he was younger.

He rides until his thighs are sore and his horse’s stamina stalls and only then does he circle back to where he last saw Byleth. She’s dismounted, her silhouette against the horizon as she stands facing away from him and looking back towards the city, the wind catching the hem of her cloak.

There has only ever been one person among those who mattered to him who died and did not fall in line in his specter army, Dimitri realizes as he approaches her.

He doesn’t need to touch her shoulder to remind himself that she’s real, but he does so anyway, because… he _ wants _ to.

(He remembers the way that Edelgard used to watch Byleth at the monastery. The Edelgard that stands with him now doesn’t react, however, as he steps in closer with the professor.)

“Byleth,” he says, “who was Edelgard to you?”

She’s quiet for a while. Byleth has never said much, but Dimitri thinks it’s because she never says anything she doesn’t mean. “Many things,” she says finally, “but most of all, a girl who was forced to steel herself young until she became a woman who never knew she could ask for help.” Wide eyes capture his. “Who was she to you?”

Edelgard stands to his left, and Byleth to his right. Byleth, the Ashen Demon, the legendary mercenary who could kill without regret ever to flicker to her eyes. Whose stoic nature turned out to hide a compassionate one, who never pushed upon him in his darkest times or lectured at him but was always there to just - listen, and be present.

Who has hair that catches the moonlight and doesn’t leave shadows, whose rare smiles could warm a Faerghus winter evening.

He turns towards her and on impulse, he tucks a stray strand behind her ear. The pounding in his ears drown out the words of phantoms as they hiss behind him.

He thinks - he hopes, he isn’t being too bold.

“Edelgard, to me, is…” His voice drains but he presses forward. “Someone to move on from.”

Byleth lays a hand on top of his that still hovers beside her face and presses it to her cheek - and for the first time, Dimitri feels her smile.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. I'd love to know what you think!
> 
> Here's a teaser of a plot point that I ended up never weaving in. Maybe one day I'll sneak it in, if I decide to flesh the story out a little more.
> 
> _“How do you distinguish reality and madness,” he says, “when there is such evil in both?”_
> 
> _Byleth looks to him and her sharp gaze stills all his swarming thoughts. “Between the two, where do good things come from?”_


End file.
